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Adapted and directed by Sam Bertken and featuring Valerie Fachman, Carl Lucania, Marlene Yarosh, Genevieve Perdue, Megan Briggs, Matt Weimer, Charlie D. Gray, Sam Heft-Luthy, Vince Faso, Karl Schackne and Kevin Glass, LEAR is the fitting swan song of sadness and silliness that will close the book on Theater Pub.

Catch “LEAR” only at PIANOFIGHT (144 Taylor Street):

Monday, November 28 @ 8:00pm
Tuesday, November 29 @ 8:00pm

As always, admission is FREE, with a $10 donation suggested at the door. No reservations required, but we get there early to get a good seat and enjoy PianoFight’s full bar and delicious dinner menu. Remember to show your appreciation to our hosts

Theater Pub’s November show is another classic from the Bard’s folio. We’ve done comedies, we’ve done histories, we’ve done problem plays- and now, with the same love, speed, and healthy irreverence that’s made these productions instant classics in the past, we present William Shakespeare’s LEAR.

Adapted and directed by Sam Bertken and featuring Valerie Fachman, Carl Lucania, Marlene Yarosh, Genevieve Perdue, Megan Briggs, Matt Weimer, Charlie D. Gray, Sam Heft-Luthy, Vince Faso, Karl Schackne and Kevin Glass, LEAR is the fitting swan song of sadness and silliness that will close the book on Theater Pub.

As always, admission is FREE, with a $10 donation suggested at the door. No reservations required, but we get there early to get a good seat and enjoy PianoFight’s full bar and delicious dinner menu. Remember to show your appreciation to our hosts

The Pint-Sized Plays have their 4th performance tonight! We continue our series of interviews with the festival’s writers and directors by speaking to writer Christian Simonsen and director Alejandro Torres of “No Fault”! (Alejandro also served as the Deputy Producer of Pint-Sized this year.)

“No Fault” introduces us to Jack and Kate, a divorcing couple with an 8-year-old daughter, who’ve scheduled a quick meeting in a corner bar to sign their divorce papers, make it official, and try to put the past to rest. Colin Hussey and Lisa Darter play the couple.

Christian Simonsen, a writer returning to Pint-Sized.

What made you get involved with Pint-Sized this year or, if you’re returning to the festival, why did you come back?

Christian: I have been a fan of the Pint-Sized Play Festival since the beginning, and I was honored to have an earlier short play of mine, the comedy “Multitasking,” produced by this festival in 2013. I love immersive, site-specific theater like this, where the actors rub shoulders with the audience. That’s not just an expression… if you come to this show, a drunk llama may literally rub your shoulders!

Alejandro: I love this theater company and all the fresh work they bring to San Francisco (and on a monthly basis too). I’ve directed and performed with them before and have also met some great and talented folks that keep me coming back.

What’s the hardest thing about writing a short play?

Christian: The challenge to writing a short play is to remember that it’s not a full-length play crammed into a few pages. That may sound obvious, but it’s tempting during the writing process to forget that. It generally can only be about one thing. Every word of dialogue, every prop, every stage direction must earn its keep. A full-length play can survive three or four weak scenes. A short play has trouble recovering from three or four weak lines of dialogue. As a general rule, a short script can’t really handle numerous subplots crisscrossing each other, but it should also avoid being a “mood piece” that just sits there.

What’s the best thing about writing a short play?

Christian: Its purity. Audience members rarely walk away from a short play with mixed feelings; it either worked or it didn’t. As a writer, I’m most productive when I’m given boundaries and limitations, and the short play format fits the bill perfectly. For example, in “No Fault,” a separated couple are going through the awkward, tense ordeal of signing their divorce papers in a pub that they used to frequent during happier times. The stage directions have both actors sitting at a table for most of the script. But when the woman delivers the most intimate line of dialogue to her now ex-husband, she is standing away from the table while the man remains seated. The ironic contrast of their emotional closeness and their physical distance would be lost (or at least watered down) in a longer play where the actors would be moving around for two hours, willy-nilly.

What’s been the most exciting part of this process?

Alejandro: Simply getting it all together as producer and table work as a director.

If you could cast a celebrity in your Pint-Sized Play, who would it be and why?

Christian: That’s tough, because I try and make it a point not to picture celebrities, whether world-famous or local, when I create characters. My goal is always to write a character that is solid and fully-formed on the page, while still leaving enough wiggle room where an actor can put their own spin on him or her. That being said, for this script I could picture actors Mark Ruffalo, Elden Henson, John Hawkes, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Amy Poehler, Sandra Oh.

Alejandro: Hmm… Maggie Cheung and Joaquin Phoenix. I they would make for an interesting dynamic.

Director Alejandro Torres shows off his dramatic side.

Who’s your secret Bay Area actor crush? That is… what actor would you love a chance to work with?

Alejandro: This is cheating as I have worked with these two before but have never directed them: Genevieve Perdue and Alan Coyne.

What are you currently working on/what’s next for you?

Christian: I was one of the staff writers on Killing My Lobster’s August sketch comedy show Game of Nerds, which was a lot of fun to work on. My next project is a collaboration with the multi-talented Sean Owens. We are developing a comedy web series called Under the Covers, which will be both hysterical and educational (or at least one of the two).

Alejandro: The SF Fringe Festival this September will be my next project. I will be remounting an original piece called Projected Voyages about dreams, nightmares, and passing thoughts.

What Bay Area theater events or shows are you excited about this summer/fall?

Christian: I want to see Barry Eitel’s The Ice Cream Sandwich Incident. I’ve always admired Barry as an actor, and I’m anxious to see what he does as a playwright. It also stars two of my favorite local actors, Becky Hirschfeld and Paul Rodrigues. And producer Stuart Bousel’s San Francisco Olympians Festival in October is always an exciting event that features new plays by Bay Area writers.

Alejandro: Killing My Lobster’s August show Game of Nerds. [ed: this closed last weekend! Apologies for not posting this interview sooner!]

What’s your favorite beer?

Christian: Stella Artois, but I will happily endorse another brewery if they give me their product or money or both.

Alejandro: IPAs that pair well with whiskey.

“No Fault” and the other Pint-Sized Plays have 2 performances remaining: August 23 and 29 at 8 PM at PianoFight!

“I Like That” is a modern rom-com time travel quest for jewels—or gentler days before post-modernism and meta-critiques prevented us from baring our souls. A love story about a guy, a gal, and a phone packed with every piece of information in human history, “I Like That” seeks to translate the Gen X, Gen Y, and Millennial species to each other and the robots that serve them.

San Francisco Theater Pub is pleased to present the world premiere of the full length work, playing only four times at PianoFight (144 Taylor Street, San Francisco). Admission is FREE (with a five dollar suggested donation).

Monday, November 16, at 8 PM
Tuesday, November 17, at 8 PM
Monday, November 23, at 8 PM
Tuesday, November 24, at 8 PM

The play runs about 70 minutes. Don’t miss it- and be sure to come early (or stay late) and enjoy PianoFight’s full bar and menu!

Charles Lewis III brings us a special report on the rebirth of Theater Pub’s performance branch.

Welcome back, old friend.

Right now I have three distinct memories stuck in my head.

The first takes place a few years ago when I found myself crashing on the sofa of Clint Winder (tech guru for PianoFight) and his roommate, Rob Ready (the artistic director). It had been a wild night of inebriated debauchery in which I probably did one or two things I’d probably regret if I could remember them. Needless to say, I was grateful to Clint for taking mercy on me and letting me sleep it off at he and Rob’s Chinatown bachelor pad. When I woke up the next morning – throat scratchy from weed and head throbbing from drink – I’ll never forget the first thing my eyes focused on was the blueprint on the wall. For quite some time, the PianoFighters had been talking about having their own piece of real estate. Not just being renters like every other non-profit indie theatre company in the Bay Area; no, they this was going to be a full-blown theatre owned and operated by PianoFight. It would have, as was described to me, “an upstairs, a downstairs, a full bar, a cabaret space, and different stages going all at once”.

Of course there were quite a few naysayers. Several theatre people (who shall remain nameless) laughed at the idea that “the Delta House of Bay Area theatre” could pull their shit together long enough to even get this ridiculous idea off the ground, let alone actually succeed. They thought PF’s plans were just a bunch of talk and waiting patiently for them to fail spectacularly. Me? I couldn’t predict the future of the space one way or another. I just know that the blueprint and the idea behind it were a pleasant sight to see first thing on a Sunday morning. That, and I really needed a Tylenol.

The second memory is walking down Market St. over the past decade. Even as a born-native San Franciscan, I’d never been in Hollywood Billiards. I had nothing against it, I just never found my way inside. I usually met friends at bars of their choice and our pub crawls never went down Market. Maybe it was my lack of any tangible connection to the place that kept me from lamenting its passing. I mean, its front doors had been replaced with a cool psychedelic mural that, to me, actually improved the walk down Market. The changes in my city irk me more than most, but still… those eyes, man. Those eyes were where it was at.

The third memory takes place several times in 2014. I’m at a bar with other theatre folk, in a kitchen with other theatre folk, or at a backyard party with other theatre folk. We’re all drinking, as we are wont to do, and throwing out ideas for theatre ideas we each think would be pretty cool. A full-length adaptation here, a night of hilarious shorts there, the occasional suggestion for a one-(wo)man show – the usual stuff. None of us are as dismissive as we usually are, no matter how ridiculous the ideas. All we need is a place to put it on and some folks willing to sacrifice their dignity to make it happen. It’s only a matter of time before someone grips their drink tightly in one hand, yells “Fuck!” whilst swinging their other hand, and laments “This would be a perfect show for Theater Pub!”, at which point we all mourn the fact that at the time that name only applied to the very website you’re now reading.

All three of these memories are on my mind as I walk toward the former home of Hollywood Billiards this past December. The psychedelic eyes are long gone, there isn’t a pool table anywhere to be found, and the inside is full of local eateries. When I was in Stuart’s play Pastorella one of my co-stars had told me about the changes, so I began stopping by every now and then. The place is okay, I think. I can’t mentally compare it to what it was before, but I’m more interested in how it will look in the future. As this was December, we were a few weeks removed from both the Thanksgiving announcement that this would be one of Theater Pub’s two new homes, and the original staged reading [/LINK] of our first new show, Satyr Night Fever. I look around and don’t see any place for a stage or a band, but there’s lots of room to maneuver around the way we did in our old space. I have no idea how this is going to work and, now considered an “official” member of Theater Pub, I have the presumptive gall to think “What the hell has Stuart gotten us into?”

There’s been a lot of talk about when (if ever) Theater Pub would come back and what form it would take if it did. That’s the think about talk: there’s rarely any requirement for it to be more than just that. But as I sit in the newly-dubbed The Hall sipping boba tea and munching a fish taco, the idea of a staging a romantic comedy about a lovelorn goat-man and a walking tree spirit doesn’t seem so crazy. I don’t know how it’ll happen, but I’m glad to hear people talking about it.

PianoFight’s new Californicorn that hangs above the new space.

Three months earlier I’m at SF SketchFest to see a show featuring PianoFight’s all-female troupe, Chardonnay. It was a really funny show. Afterwards we all head to a nearby bar and I catch up with everyone. Having known most of the members since 2009 at this point, it’s a bit of a trip to see how many of them have… I’m trying to think of a better term than “settled down”. That implies that they’ve somehow lost their edge and become a shadow of their former selves, and that sure as hell ain’t true. One thing I learned from the baudy show put on that night is that no one at the company is ready to give up on the raunchy satire that is their bread ‘n butter. But there’s definitely been changes in the PianoFighters themselves. Quite a few of them have gotten married, nearly all of them have gotten new jobs, and the new space is their base of operations after wandering through different venues. No, “settled down” isn’t the right term. “Grown up” fits better.

By December I’d toured the new space as it was a work in progress. Wires needs to be connected, walls needed painting, and pieces of wood were everywhere. But the Californicorn was up behind the bar. PianoFight’s logo is the California grizzly with added unicorn horns and angel wings. To christen their new place, they commissioned a mosaic of the logo by performer/artist extraordinaire Molly Benson. It’s really purrty. More importantly, it’s representative of how serious the company is to make this place work. They’ve planted their flag and staked their claim in the middle of the Tenderloin. Quite a few theatre people talk about what they’d do if they had their own space, but know they’ll always be at the whim of dickish landlords and a shrinking number of viable spaces. PianoFight decided to stop talking and actually make one of their own. Is it any surprise that we all thought “Wow, that place would make a great home for the new Theater Pub”?

That question was briefly on my mind last Saturday. This was the long-awaited day Satyr Night Fever made its debut at The Hall. It was the first ‘Pub show since December 2013 and the first ever “matinée” show, starting at 2pm. There was brunch, there were laughs, there were a few technical SNAFUs that were easily covered up by ecstatic moaning off-stage. Complete strangers who’d just stopped in for a quick snack wound up staying for mimosas and goat-man love. Familiar faces like such as Claire Rice, Marissa Skudlarek, Matt Gunnison, and Christian Simonsen could be seen all around. Most importantly, San Francisco Theater Pub was back and we were all happy to see it.

Yes, they made a stage.

Two days later I was sitting in the new PianoFight space getting a drink from Les, the sweet old guy who served us many a pint in the ‘Pub original heyday. Now here he was, beneath the Californicorn as Tonya Narvaez, one of our new co-artistic directors, gave the crowd the rundown for the evening. The last time I was part of Theater Pub, I directing Eli Diamond to not give any attitude to his ornery old granny. Now I was watching him be hit on then berated by a vivacious tree nymph in a horrible Christmas sweater. By the time Meg Trowbridge, our other new co-AD, gave her closing speech and hit up our audience for money, rest assured that they’d the single best Greek mythology love story that one could ever find in the cabaret space of the theatre building owned by a raunchy San Francisco independent theatre company. They had something to talk about.

It gave us all the feels.

In case you couldn’t tell yet, lots of talk annoys me after a while. I say that as someone who does a great of talking all the time. That doesn’t change the fact that it annoys me. Maybe it’s the person talking that gets to me, maybe it’s what they’re saying, maybe it’s the time of day when it was said – those things can count for a lot when someone is expecting me to listen to them ramble on and on. Hell, I consider it an act of faith that you haven’t clicked away by this point. The reason I bring this up is because the thing I most remember about Theater Pub is what people said – before the show, after the show, and what was said during the performance. We’d talk dreams and talk shit with equal aplomb. That’s what I missed most about Theater Pub going away, talking with everyone. Talking about Theater Pub was what I most loved and hated about the time when it didn’t have a stage home. Talking about it is what I look forward to most in its new incarnation.

None of us are the same as we were back then. We’ve changed, we’ve grown, we’ve transformed into things that would hardly recognise the people we used to be. There’s no guarantee of where we’ll go from here, but I can’t wait talk about where we are now.

Charles Lewis III will be at the final performance of Satyr Night Fever tonight if you want to talk to him. He’ll understand if you don’t. It’s at 144 Taylor St. in San Francisco. The show starts at 8pm, with a $5.00 suggested donation at the door.

Fresh from this past year’s San Francisco Olympians Festival, we’ll be doing a fast and furious, three performance run of SATYR NIGHT FEVER, a bawdy comedy by Annette Roman and Bryant Turnage, directed by Greg Young and featuring Tony Cirimele, Annabelle King, Genevieve Perdue, and Karl Schackne!

SATYR NIGHT FEVER is the tale of hapless satyr Peter, who has lost his mojo. In a world of manscaped, owl-spectacled, skinny-jeaned hipsters, Peter’s back hair, frumpy clothes, and nerdy hobbies, just aren’t attracting the ladies. Desperate, he seeks guidance from a human pick-up artist to learn some modern tricks of the trade. The gentlemen hit the bar to find Peter a date, and run into a frustrated water-nymph with a dating coach and agenda of her own.

The show plays three performances:

Saturday, January 17, at 2 PM at THE HALL (1028 Market Street)Monday, January 19, at 8 PM at PIANOFIGHT (144 Taylor Street)Monday, January 26, at 8 PM at PIANOFIGHT (144 Taylor Street)

Help us welcome back the production side of Theater Pub and kick off a new era of exciting new work! As always, admission is FREE, with a $5 donation suggested at the door. No reservations required, but we suggest getting there early to get a good seat and don’t forget to show your appreciation to our hosts at the bar!

Boxing Day seemed like the perfect time to announce some more exciting news about this upcoming year, which includes the return of Theater Pub’s producing side! Maybe it’s because Founding Artistic Director Stuart Bousel is such an unapologetic anglophile, or maybe it’s because we hope this news will knock you out- with happiness!

A new year should always bring changes and we’re happy to announce that James Grady has been formally made Theater Pub’s official Music Director. James is originally from Scottsdale, AZ, but has called San Francisco home since 2008, and has firmly established himself in the local music and theater scenes. His first music directing gig was the 2011 Theater Pub holiday spectacular, a concert version of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. The following year he music directed and sang the role of Roger in Theater Pub’s RENT. Most he was the music director of Kristin Hersh’s RAT GIRL, adapted for the stage by Stuart Bousel. Other credits include playing guitar in the band of Custom Made Theatre’s production of NEXT TO NORMAL, performing in the house band for several Killing My Lobster shows, and playing the role of Roger in RENT at Altarena Playhouse.

Another great change: our longest running Theater Pub columnist, Marissa Skudlarek, not only took on running our Twitter account this last year, but has agreed to wear the crown of Pint Sized Tzarina! This means she’ll be running the long anticipated PINT SIZED V, so if you’re a writer, director, or actor, keep your eyes peeled for chances to get involved with this year’s festival! Marissa is a San Francisco-based playwright and arts writer. She is a frequent collaborator of Theater Pub, which produced her short plays DRINKING FOR TWO and BEER THEORY in the 2010 and 2012 PINT-SIZED PLAY Festivals, respectively. Theater Pub has also afforded her opportunities to write heroic couplets in praise of props masters (ODES OF MARCH), translate and produce a Jean Cocteau play (ORPHEE), do silly things while dressed in a fake beard and a toga (CONGRESSWOMEN) or reindeer antlers and smudged mascara (CODE RED) — and, of course, to write her biweekly column “Hi-Ho, the Glamorous Life.” Since moving to the Bay Area in 2008, Marissa has also been heavily involved with the San Francisco Olympians Festival, which commissioned her full-length drama PLEIADES in 2011 (just produced this past year) and her first screenplay, APHRODITE, OR THE LOVE GODDESS, in 2012. Marissa’s other full-length plays include DEUS EX MACHINA (Young Playwrights Festival National Competition winner, 2006), MARGINALIA, and THE ROSE OF YOUTH (Marilyn Swartz Seven Award, 2008). Her shorter plays have been produced by Un-Scripted Theatre and the San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival; and she has worked in a literary/dramaturgical capacity with Cutting Ball Theater, the Bay One-Acts Festival, and Portland Center Stage. Marissa grew up outside of Portland, Oregon, and double-majored in Drama and French at Vassar College.

Megan Cohen will continue to run Saturday Write Fever along-side Stuart Bousel, and we are pleased to say we have formally taken on three co-hosts to assist with keeping one of San Francisco’s most beloved monthly theater events fun and friendly! Sam Bertken, Andrew Chung, and Jeunee Simon have all been a tremendous part of Saturday Write Fever for the last year, helping out and subbing, often times carrying an evening on their own. We couldn’t be more pleased to welcome them to the “official” Theater Pub family and look forward to another year of getting the audience writing and acting on the stage of the EXIT Cafe!

And now for our biggest announcement!

A new chapter for Theater Pub means an opportunity to restructure and change the way we do things in order to plan for a longer, better, more sustainable future. In practical terms, this has meant the hiring of two new Artistic Directors, each of whom will be helping four months of the next calendar year, working to continue Theater Pub’s tradition of generating smart, exciting, daring work while upholding our impeccable standards of inclusivity, opportunity, and fun. We are excited beyond expressing to announce that Tonya Narvaez and Meghan Trowbridge have agreed to take on these roles and we can’t wait to see what they’ll bring to the Pub!

Tonya Narvaez is a writer and actor originally from the Midwest and southern California, where she studied Theatre Arts at California State University, Long Beach. She is currently the Production Manager for Loud and Unladylike and writing a piece in the San Francisco Olympians Festival VI: Wine Dark Sea. She’s worked with a number of Bay Area theater companies, including: Battle Stache Studios, Awesome Theatre Company, Thunderbird Theatre Company, No Nude Men Productions, Custom Made Theatre Company, Sleepwalkers Theatre, The Mess, and Guywriters.

Meghan Trowbridge is a playwright and singer living in San Francisco, CA. She writes for SF’s premier sketch company Killing My Lobster, Berkeley’s playwright incubator Playground-SF, the science and culture webzine Mathom House, and Good Morning, Good Morning: a collaboration of misfits. Her plays have been produced by the SF Olympians Festival, FoolsFURY, and Inkblot Ensemble under her pen name Meghan Kathleen O’Connor. She is a proud member of the comedy improv team Chinese Ballroom, performing regularly around the Bay Area and beyond (like Sacramento). She has worked with TheaterPub since it’s inaugural season, and lubs this company very much.

To find out more about our current (and past) staff, you can always check out the bios (and sexy head shots) on our San Francisco Theater Pub Team page.

Happy Holidays and we hope you will join us in the new year for the three performance run of SATYR NIGHT FEVER, a bawdy comedy by Annette Roman and Bryant Turnage, directed by Greg Young and featuring Tony Cirimele, Annabelle King, Genevieve Perdue, and Karl Schackne! The show plays Saturday, January 17, at 2 PM at THE HALL (1028 Market Street), Monday, January 19, at 8 PM at PIANOFIGHT (144 Taylor Street), and Monday, January 26, at 8 PM at PIANOFIGHT (144 Taylor Street). As always, admission is FREE, with a $5 donation suggested at the door.